This large nautical chart is sheet no. 9 of the famous Carte de la Mer Méditerranée en douze feuilles, an ambitious work created by Joseph Roux of Marseille in 1764. The entire series, consisting of twelve sheets, provided a comprehensive view of the Mediterranean basin and the Sea of Marmara, serving as an essential reference tool for navigation at the time.
The map focuses on the southern part of the island of Candia (Crete) and the long stretch of coastline known as Barbaria (the present-day North African coast, which at the time included regions under the control of Ottoman regencies or Barbary states). Among the place names that appear along the African coast, Alexandrie (Alexandria in Egypt) stands out in the lower right corner, a key hub for maritime trade. The map is characterized by the typical dense network of directional lines—the so-called loxodromic lines—that radiate from various centers (the “points of the compass”), allowing the navigator to plot the optimal course while maintaining a constant angle relative to magnetic north.
Eighteenth-century nautical charts, derived from the tradition of medieval portolans, have distinctive technical features:
Practical Purpose: Unlike terrestrial maps, the primary objective was navigation at sea. The coastline is depicted with extreme precision, particularly with regard to ports, roadsteads, and headlands, which are essential for safe navigation.
Lack of detail: Inland areas are often left blank or shown with little detail, as they were irrelevant to the sailor observing the world from a ship’s deck.
Compass rose and loxodromes: The web of lines crisscrossing the sea is not purely decorative but serves to indicate the direction to follow between two points, facilitating compass navigation.
Graphic scales: In the lower left corner are distance scales (leagues of France, England, Holland, Spain, and Italy), which are essential for calculating distances based on the various units of measurement used by European navies.
The Recueil des principaux plans des ports, et rades de la mer Méditerranée, from which this map is derived, represents the pinnacle of Roux’s work. First published in Marseille in 1764, this atlas enjoyed extraordinary success, being reprinted and adapted for decades in various editions (such as the well-known Livorno edition). In an era marked by intense trade routes and geopolitical tensions in the Mediterranean, Roux’s work offered a systematic mapping of ports, becoming a “must-have” not only for merchants but also for the French and British navies.
Joseph Roux was a central figure in 18th-century hydrography. A member of a renowned Marseille dynasty of cartographers and marine painters, he held the position of Hydrographe du Roy (Royal Hydrographer). His location in Marseille, a key port in the Mediterranean, afforded him privileged access to up-to-date nautical information and the most recent surveys. In addition to cartography, the Roux family later distinguished itself through the creation of meticulous ship portraits, documenting the evolution of naval architecture between the 18th and 19th centuries.
